Synopses & Reviews
Born in 1834 near Quimper, in Brittany, to landless farmers, the young
JEAN-MARIE DÉGUIGNET was sent out several times a week to beg for the family's food. After spending some of his adolescent years as a cowherd and a domestic speaking only Breton, he left the province as a soldier, avid for knowledge of the vast world. He taught himself Latin, then French, then Italian and Spanish; he read history and philosophy and politics and literature. He was sent to fight in the Crimean war, to attend at Emperor Napoleon III's coronation ceremonies, to support Italy's liberation struggle, and to defend the hapless French puppet emperor Maximilian in Mexico; he came home to live as a model farmer, a tobacconist, falling back into dire poverty.
From the Hardcover edition.
About the Author
Born to landless farmers in Brittany in 1834, JEAN-MARIE DÉGUIGNET spent his childhood and adolescence as a beggar and cowherd. He joined the French Army in 1854, and was unique for a peasant from this region in that he was not only literate, but well-read, and taught himself Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish. Former New Yorker fiction editor and translator LINDA ASHER is the recipient of many awards including the French-American Translation Prize in 2000.